Secret for a Nightingale (6 page)

“I think we are masters of our fates. Will you marry me?”

“Do you … mean that seriously?”

“I am deadly serious.”

“Aubrey …” I murmured.

“You are not going to say, ” This is so sudden”, are you?”

“No.”

“Then you will?”

“I think I will.”

“You only think?”

“Well, I have never had a proposal of marriage before, and I don’t quite know how to deal with it.”

He burst out laughing and, turning to me, took me in his arms and kissed me.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” he said.

“Have you been wanting me to?”

“Yes, I think I have.”

“You think! Don’t you know? You are so definite in your views on every other subject.”

“I feel such a novice … at love.”

“That is what I love about you. So young … so fresh … so innocent… so honest.” | “I would rather be more worldly like some of the wives .. ^ Mrs. Freeling, for instance.” ;

For a moment he was silent. I thought he looked uncertain and was about to say something. He appeared to change his mind and I wondered if I had imagined it.

“Those people are not really worldly, you know,” he said at length.

“They are older than you and pose all the time as socialites. Don’t be like they are, for Heaven’s sake. Just be yourself, Susanna. That’s what I want.”

He held my hand tightly and we looked out over the sea.

“What a perfect night,” he said.

“A calm sea, a gentle breeze and Susanna has promised to marry me.”

When I told my father he was faintly disturbed.

“You are very young,” he said.

“I am eighteen. That’s a marriageable age.”

“In some cases … yes. But you have come straight from school. You haven’t really met any people.”

“I don’t have to. I know I love Aubrey.”

“Well … I suppose it is all right. There is that place in Buckinghamshire which I presume will be his one day. He seems fairly solid.”

“It’s no use trying to play the mercenary Papa because you don’t do it very well. You know that if I want it and I’m happy that will be all right with you.”

“That’s about it,” he agreed.

“Trust you to sum up the situation in a few words. So you are engaged. It is amazing how many people become engaged on sea voyages. It must be something in the air.”

Tropical seas . flying fishes . dolphins . “

“Hurricanes, rolling breakers and nausea.”

Don’t be unromantic, Father. It doesn’t suit you. Say you are pleased and proud of your daughter who has managed to find a husband without the expensive London season you were planning, to launch her into society. “

“My dear child, all I want is your happiness. You chose this man and if he makes you happy that is all I ask.”

He kissed me.

“You’ll have to help me choose a place in London,” he said.

“Even though doubtless you will be obsessed by your own affairs.”

“I shall indeed. Oh, Father, I was planning to look after you!”

“And now you will have a husband to look after instead. I am deeply hurt.”

I hugged him and felt a sudden twinge of apprehension. How ill had he been? And why had Head Quarters decided that he should leave India?

I was so happy. The future loomed ahead, so exciting that I had to warn myself that there was rarely complete perfection in life. I had to look for the worm in the wood, the flaw in the diamond. Nothing could be quite so perfect as it seemed that night when Aubrey asked me to marry him.

There was so much to talk of, so much to plan. Aubrey was to accompany us to London and see us into our hotel before going on to his home.

Then it had been decided that my father and I should pay an early visit to Minster St. Clare in Buckinghamshire.

I was looking forward to the arrival at Tilbury not dreading it as I had anticipated when I had thought it might mean saying goodbye to Aubrey for ever. As for Aubrey himself, he was in a state of euphoria, and I was immensely gratified to know that I had created it.

So we said au revoir with promises to visit Aubrey’s home in two weeks’ time. Amelia, his sister-in-law, would be de45

lighted to receive us, he was sure. As for his brother, he did not know how he would find him.

I wondered whether, as his brother was so ill, guests would be welcome in the house, but he assured me that it was a big house and there were plenty of people to look after everything and both his brother and his wife would surely want to meet me.

We had comfortable rooms in a somewhat old-fashioned hotel close to Piccadilly recommended by Uncle James who used it on his brief visits to London; and on the following day I went house-hunting and my father presented himself at the War Office.

I found a small house in Albemarle Street which was to be let furnished, and I planned to take my father along to see it at the first opportunity.

When he came home he seemed quite excited. He was to have a job of some responsibility at the War Office, which he thought would be very demanding. He looked at the house and decided we should take it and move in at the beginning of the next week. I had a few very busy days engaging servants to start with and making arrangements to go into our new home, which we had taken on rental for three months.

I said: “That will give us time to look round for a real home and if we haven’t found it by then, we can no doubt stay here a little longer.”

My father said rather sadly, “It will probably be a bachelor’s apartment which I shall need, for you are bent on making a home with someone else.”

“Weddings take a long time to arrange and I shall be with:

you for a while. And in any case I shall be visiting you often.

Buckinghamshire is not so very far away. ” I had found the search quite exciting. I had always been interested in houses. They seemed to have personalities of their own. Some seemed happy houses, others mysterious, some;

even mildly menacing. My father laughed at my fancifuli ideas; but I really did feel atmospheric sensations quite;

vividly. J I was pleased, too, that my father was enjoying the War,

Office. I had feared that after having been on active service he might find work in an office dull. Not so. He was absorbed and I could not help feeling that it had been a good move to bring him home. Sometimes he looked a little tired, but of course he was no longer a young man and that was natural. I wondered now and then about that illness he had had, but he was rather reticent about it and I fancied it disturbed him to talk about it so I did not mention it. He was well now and life was too exciting for me to want to cloud over the brightness, so I assured myself that there was nothing to worry about and that we were all going to be happy ever after.

We settled into the furnished house, which we found ideal;

the two servants I had engaged, Jane and Polly, were very good, willing girls. They were sisters who were delighted to have found jobs together.

My father decided he must have a carriage to take him to and from the War Office and he acquired one and a coachman to go with it. Joe Tugg, a widower in his late forties, was glad to come to us for, as he boasted often, he had driven the mail coach from London to Bath for twenty years until as he said “Steam took away me living,” by which he meant that the coming of the railroads had been the ruin of many of the old coachmen. There were two rooms over the stabling in the mews at the back of the house and Joe settled in. We were a very contented household.

I said: “We must keep them all when we find the house.” And my father agreed.

I had a letter from Aubrey’s sister-in-law signed Amelia St. Clare. She wrote that she would be delighted to see me and congratulated me on my engagement. Her husband was very ill indeed but he wanted to meet me very much. They were not entertaining generally on account other husband’s illness, but they would regard me as one of the family.

It was a warm and welcoming letter.

Aubrey wrote that he was longing to see me and would meet us at the station.

Two days before the visit my father came home one evening looking very disturbed.

“I don’t think I can possibly go,” he said.

“I can’t leave the office.

I shall have to be there . perhaps over the weekend. Something of vital importance has cropped up. It’s India, and my special knowledge of the country makes my presence necessary. “

I felt hideously disappointed. Then I said: “I can go without you.

Father. Jane and Polly will look after you. “

He frowned.

“Oh come,” I said.

“I am not a child. I am a much travelled woman. And if you are thinking of chaperons, there is Mrs. Amelia St. Clare.”

He was hesitating. ;

“I shall go, Father,” I said firmly.

“You must, of course, stay. | You could not leave your post particularly as you have justi taken it up. I’ll go on ahead and perhaps you can come down? afterwards. I must go. After all, I am engaged to be married.”

“Well…” he said. He was still hesitating.

“I suppose I could | put you on the train. Aubrey could pick you up at the other I end.” ;

“For Heaven’s sake! You make me sound like a parcel.” And so it happened that on that hot and sultry day I set out for Minster St. Clare.

My father had, as he said, ‘put me’ in a first-class carriage, and” as I waved goodbye to him I tried to set aside my anxieties. I;

did worry about his health and that mysterious illness he had] had some time before, and I made up my mind that I was| going to make him tell me all about it as soon as I was withj him again.

But as I grew nearer and nearer to my destination I ga myself up to excited anticipation. Aubrey was standing on the platform waiting for me. He smiled as he hurried to me and took my hands.

“Welcome, Susanna. It is good to see you.” He put an ann| round me and called to the porter, who was standing by| watching us with interest: “Here, Bates. Put the luggage in the| carriage, will you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Bates; and Aubrey took me out of the station yard.

He led me to a carriage. I opened my eyes in amazement. It was so splendid. It was mulberry colour and drawn by two magnificent greys. I did not know much about horses but I could see that these two were very fine.

He noticed my admiration for the carriage.

“It’s so grand,” I said.

“I’ve taken it over from my brother. He can’t drive it now.”

“How is he?”

“Very, very ill.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have come.”

“Nonsense. In there. Bates. That’s right. Come, Susanna, up beside the driver.” He helped me into the carriage. Then he climbed in beside me and took the reins.

“Tell me about your brother,” I said.

“Poor Stephen. He has been dying for the last weeks. The doctors think he cannot last for more than three months … or he could go at any moment.”

“How very distressing.”

“You see why I had to come home. Amelia is most anxious to meet you.”

“She wrote me a very kind letter.”

“She would. It is hard for her, poor girl.”

“I am sorry Father could not come. You understand?”

“But of course, and as a matter of fact it was you whom I wanted to see. I hope you like the house. You have to, you know. It’s going to be your home.”

“I am so excited.”

“These old houses take a bit of getting used to. For us who are brought up in them they seem like part of the family.”

“Yet you were away from home for quite a while. I know how much you’ve travelled. You must tell me all about it sometime.”

“Well, the house will be mine now. Things seem different when they belong to someone else. Oh, it was always my home, but my brother was master of it. I was afraid that I should feel like a guest.”

“I understand.”

“I think you’ll find it interesting. There is little of the Minster left. The house was built by an ancestor of mine in the sixteenth century when a great deal of building and reconstruction was done on the site of old monasteries and abbeys. It’s a real Tudor building late Elizabethan and there are only fragments of old ruined walls and a buttress or two about the place to remind you what it was before the Dissolution.”

“I had no idea it had such a history. I just imagined an old manor house.”

“Well, you will see for yourself.”

We had come to a stretch of road and the horses broke into a gallop. I was thrown against Aubrey and he laughed.

“They can really go, these greys,” he said.

“I’ll show you one day what they can do.”

I laughed. It was exhilarating to be beside him and to contemplate arriving at this old house which was to be my home. I was struck by his masterly handling of the horses. He clearly enjoyed driving them.

We had come to a stone wall. Massive iron gates stood open and we passed into a drive. The horses were trotting now.

Then I saw the house. I caught my breath. I had not expected it to be so grand. The central keep with gateway and portcullis was flanked by two machicolated towers.

Aubrey glanced at me, well pleased by my obvious admiration.

“It’s wonderful,” I stammered.

“How could you have left it for so long.”

“I told you. I did not know it was to be mine.”

We drove through a gateway into a courtyard where two grooms appeared.

Aubrey threw the reins to one of them, leaped down and then helped me out.

“This is Miss Pleydell, Jim,” he said.

I smiled and the man touched his forelock.

“Have the baggage sent in at once,” commanded Aubrey. He turned to me and, taking my arm, said: “Come along.”

He led me from the courtyard to a quadrangle. The walls were creeper-covered and the latticed windows looked like eyes peering out from under shaggy brows. There was a table with some chairs on which were flame-coloured cushions; and a number of pots containing flowering shrubs added colour to the spot. It was very attractive, and yet I had a sense of claustrophobia, as though the walls were closing in on me.

There was a passage with moulded vaulting; we passed through this to a bigger courtyard. Before us was a door heavy, iron-studded, with a panel in it which I presumed could be drawn back so that those who were inside could see who was without, before admitting them.